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We have about 120 paintings up to 120 x 80cm. I've made the majority of the frames and many others for friends and family. I thought about a Morso guillotine on more than one occasion but never bothered. I've rough cut the mitre a few mm over size by hand or on the bandsaw and then used a disc...

I had to use a piece of broken bandsaw blade to remove the toilet cistern at our last house to get through the silicon. As it is thin, flexible and has decent coarse teeth it makes a great pull saw in tight spaces. I now keep a broken blade for such jobs. Colin

Silicon is a wonderful material and does a great job on water-proofing joints. It may well work on blocked abrasives, but as mentioned earlier, is it really a good idea. I would not like to throw it around my workshop where it could get onto timber to be glued or finished. Colin

The PT 255 is the one to go for with its 10" capacity. It will easily cope with anything the serious home user will want to do. I had the 12" MB some years ago and at 400kg it was a bit heavy to move around the garage. I replaced it with a newish white SD300 12" Startrite that I'm very pleased...

The Record and the Axminster are nice machines that will give good service, but they are not in the same league as the Sedgwick. New, these machines are expensive and for good reason. This is a machine designed for the professional workshop and serious use. If you look on e-bay, facebook...

Any chance it could be two tools made into one. When you look at the top handle it looks to me as it would be very easy to snap the top of the small diameter shaft that enters into it. Colin

Have you looked up to see if anybody does motor rewinds in your area. They should have the technical knowledge to assist. Colin

You could go over the surface with a brass suede brush to remove some of the soft grain before painting. Colin

I made the most of the turn in the weather yesterday. One lawn cut, a bit of pruning on our 40 foot oak tree and a good selective spraying of Grazon Herbicide to kill the docks and brambles in our meadow grass and banks. Hopefully it will start to act before the rain returns on Monday. Colin

You should not have much heat coming out the sides of the boiler. On our previous house the boiler was housed inside a wall cupboard with about 30mm gap down the sides. Colin

And if you are wondering how to hold it in place, as I did with the same problem some years ago, use cable ties as the original straps/clips will not fit. Colin

Have a drive around your local small industrial estate in search of Architectural Joiners. You will be surprised at what you can get as they generally discount anything less than about 600mm in length and are happy to get a small return on what they have. Colin

I always thought the rule of thumb for span was take the distance and divide by two. 5m is a bit over 16 feet, so no smaller than 8x2, preferably 10x2. Colin

Sorry, but I'd have to say I'd pull the plasterboard off where the bath is. Plasterboard is not really a good idea near showers or baths where a shower may be used above it. I's not worth the risk of your hard work being spoilt a few years down the line when a grout lines fails and water gets...

The proportions seem a little off to me. At 30cm deep, by the time you take in the leg section and short overhang then the drawers are going to be very narrow. I'd go with the golden rectangle proportions of 8-5 for the top, so 800 long and 500 deep. Colin

If you have to use paints it will be water based. They are slightly soft and less likely to chip. For odd spot areas if you needed something shiny then Humbrol enamel would be good. 30 years ago for my boys I managed to find some excellent coloured dies. These could be mixed with with a spirit...

In about 1995 when we lived in Essex I built a workshop at the bottom of the garden. I did not need planning permission. The base was 8x5m and as such I needed building control to check it at various stages. I believe the strike point on the area when they step in was 30m2. The 2.5m you mention...

if you put it in a box it will make more noise. You need to sit the motor on something comparatively heavy to absorb the noise. Colin

Whilst the mitre joint does look nice, I would never attempt it on a solid timber worksurface, especially beech. The level of movement is too great and the joint will soon open up. If you have ever seen beech architrave around a door frame you will have probably noticed exactly what I mean. I...

I lived in Essex for 35 years without problem, then Merseyside for 5 years and similarly no issues. If I noticed any rust on cast iron surfaces it was a rare event and a light rub with 400 grit and a spot of honing oil did the job for the next few years. I moved to Devon in Sept 2022 and things...